by Susan Wiggs They say you never, ever forget your first time. It’s one of those “aha” moments when the world shifts, and afterwards, nothing is quite the same. You keep this moment in your heart forever, and it’s still vivid even decades later, it’s still as vivid as the rose that just opened in… Read More

Susan Wiggs

Using blunt scissors, pages from a Big Chief tablet, a
borrowed stapler and a Number Two pencil, Susan Wiggs
self-published her first novel at the age of eight. A Book
About Some Bad Kids was based on the true-life adventures of
Susan and her siblings, and the first printing of one copy
was a complete sell-out.

Due to her brother's extreme reaction to that first
prodigious effort, Susan went underground with her craft,
entertaining her friends and offending her siblings with
anonymously-written stories of virtuous sisters and the
brothers who torment them. The first romance she ever read
was Shanna by the incomparable Kathleen Woodiwiss, which she
devoured while slumped behind a college vector analysis
textbook. Armed with degrees from SFA and Harvard, and
toting a crate of "keeper" books by Woodiwiss, Roberta
Gellis, Laurie McBain, Rosemary Rodgers, Jennifer Blake,
Bertrice Small and anything with the words "flaming" and
"ecstasy" in the title, she became a math teacher, just to
prove to the world that she did have a left brain.

Late one night, she finished the book she was reading and
was confronted with a reader's worst nightmare--She was wide
awake, and there wasn''t a thing in the house she wanted to
read. Figuring this was the universe''s way of taking away
her excuses, she picked up a Big Chief tablet and a Number
Two pencil, and began writing her novel with the working
title, A Book About Some Bad Adults. Actually, that was a
bad book about some adults, but Susan persevered, learning
her craft the way skydiving is learned--by taking a blind
leap and hoping the chute will open.

Her first book was published (without the use of blunt
scissors and a stapler) by Zebra in 1987, and since then she
has been published by Avon, Tor, HarperCollins, Harlequin,
Mira and Warner Books. Unable to completely abandon her
beloved teaching profession, Susan is a frequent workshop
leader and speaker at writers' conferences, including the
Romance Writers of America conference, the PNWA and Maui
Writers Conference. She won a RITA award in 1994, and her
recent novel The Charm School was voted one of RWA's
Favorite Books of the Year. She is the proud recipient of
several RT awards, the Peninsula RWA's Blue Boa, the Holt
Medallion and the Colorado Award of Excellence.

Susan enjoys many hobbies, including sitting in the hot tub
while talking to her mother on the phone, kickboxing,
cleaning the can opener, sculpting with butter and growing
her hair. She lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest
with her husband, Jay, her daughter, Elizabeth, and an
Airedale that hasn't been groomed since 1994.

Writerspace News

Latest from our Blog

Can You Believe It?

by Linda O. Johnston I’ll bet you can guess what I’m talking about: 2016. Can you believe that this year is about to end? It’s December, and this will be my last Writerspace blog for the year. It’s certainly gone fast. I had three books published in 2016: TO CATCH A TREAT, the second Barkery… Read More